"...a whitemage still might be able to do it. At least, I don't know for sure they can't."

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't think so, but if someone wants to try..."

"What would you be able to do, if it worked?"

"I can make light. If I try very hard and think very carefully I can make light in shapes that look like things. I know I should be able to do more than that but I don't know exactly what because I was stopped before I found out. It would be—something about other people, like fixing injuries or making things easier—that is the kind of not-mage I am."

"If you might be able to heal people without a cost if a whitemage healed you, it would be very much worth it to the Temple-Guild to make the attempt."

"That makes sense. I don't think it will work but you can try it."

"We'll want to wait a while before having you in a room with any whitemages. They get sick easily and people who've been traveling are riskier than others for the first few weeks. But it's easily worth the try if it may help."

She nods. "Okay."

"Is there anything you need besides more language lessons that you might not be able to get from Tsemo?"

"I don't think so."

"Then I'll give you a few days to settle in and get comfortable with speaking Cefaxi and come back for goldmagic lessons, and if you don't seem sick after a few weeks we'll try the whitemage."

"Okay."

Tse Avimi departs. Tsemo is back after not too long.

All in all, she thinks she likes this place.

She should maybe poke around a little more in search of unpleasant surprises, though. She asks Tsemo about geography and cities and countries and governments, how Cefax is ruled, what neighbours it has.

Cefax has a Queen! She's very popular. It's an island but over on the mainland there's some countries, like Niohain, who the Queen has an alliance marriage with, and Caplare, things are a little tense there, and Mocorne, and he doesn't know of others but presumably there are some.

(And it sounds like Cefax's Queen is very popular in a more legitimate way than Eianvar's Emperor. Good to know.)

What's tense about Caplare...?

Tsemo doesn't know much about it. A now-dead goldmage and her redmage husband were involved but the redmage doesn't remember anything about it. She could ask his attendant? Tsemo doesn't think it's still a major issue.

She thinks she'll skip it for now but she thanks him for telling her. On to further education in basic facts about the world and their relevant vocabulary. Is money a thing? What are the words for food and the things food is made of? Who makes it? How does the Temple-Guild work?

Money is a thing; Cefax uses riaxi. Here is a lot of food vocabulary. Servants make it. The Temple-Guild is a bunch of mage families and their servants (like Tsemo). Mage services are extremely expensive, intentionally, so they can keep up a high standard of living even for mages who have dwindled and can't work any more. There's a pretty high servant to mage ratio so each mage needs to in their working years manage to earn enough to account for themselves, some servants, and some fraction of any mages who don't manage to earn up to par.

"...I guess I will not be like a normal mage that way."

"- I think they will still charge a lot of money for your services, they don't want to drive all the other temple-guilds into poverty. Even if you can do it a lot."

"Yes. I only mean that I won't dwindle. —do goldmages normally stop working, or do they just work until they die?"

"They stop working if it's likely that using magic again would kill them outright; they wouldn't be able to finish a job that way."

Thoughtful nod.

"And redmages keep working their whole lives, they just stop taking new clients when they're dwindled."